According to lore, approximately 8,000 years ago in outer space, the four members of cumgirl8 first came together… in the metaverse, via a group chat called, erm, cumgirl. “It was absolutely fate,” purr the band and art collective, composed of Chase Lombardo, Lida Fox, Veronika Vilim and Avishag Rodrigues.
Back on Planet Earth, the past five years have been highly productive. As well as being some of the best shitposters on the internet, the quartet have released a slew of confounding, indie-pop earworms touching on everything from the beauty industry to the eternal dilemma of cancelling plans. And all with the blessing of legendary intellectual Susan Sontag, who made an appearance in a recent music video. Well, an AI hologram of her did, anyway.
If you’re confused – good. But amid all the delirium, arch references and Y2K effluvia runs a thread of inclusive, sex-positive empowerment, inspired by riot grrrl. We dig into their predecessors, the space-time continuum and more, below.
So, what’s your relationship with the metaverse like today?
Chase: It’s mostly a healthy relationship, maybe codependent... But she’s so connected. We have fun.
Lida: She’s a little toxic, but we still love her for it.
Internet culture is led by fleeting trends; if I hear the word “demure” again, I will vomit. You mix references in a way that feels really novel but also nostalgic – do you miss the early 2000s?
C: Oh my God, yes! Demure is overrr – and, also, so patriarchal! But no – we try to not be nostalgic at all, to be honest. We prefer the present. But we’re nothing without our references.
On that note, how does one stay sane when one is chronically online?
The concept behind our album The 8th cumming is about how to navigate this. The digital apocalypse! With AI, deep fakes, necrocapitalism, the truth is becoming more and more irrelevant. Instead of fighting it, we have to lean into it. We have to lead with our hearts instead of our minds.
Agreed! So, what specific attributes make someone a cumgirl?
A big heart, a weirdo, makes mistakes, loves hard, dresses up for the grocery store.
What would make you cancel a cumgirl’s membership?
Nothing.
What is the best and worst star sign, and why?
We are all God’s precious children.
On ‘Picture Party’, one of my favourite tracks, you sing about “Collagen, oestrogen, Botox, serotonin, Juvéderm, keratin, biotin…” What do your beauty routines look like on tour?
Urine therapy.
On that, fill in the blank: The beauty industry is [...]
Going to sponsor us.
Nice! You’ve always been compared to the riot grrrl movement. Do you embrace that label?
C: Totally! We hope to be picking up where they left off, and head into new, more inclusive frontiers. We definitely embrace the comparison. It’s an honour.
A quote often attributed to Oscar Wilde reads: “Everything in human life is really about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.” What is cumgirl8’s stance on this?
L: Sex can be about so many things, but it’s also about being vulnerable, and if vulnerability is power, then I agree, sex is about power. It’s certainly something powerful. It can bring you to enlightenment.
C: I do like to feel powerful.
What would the platonic ideal of a party in the cumgirl8 universe look like?
C: It’s always a party in our universe! I would love to have some jet skis and reggaeton.
L: … followed by dinner in a hot spring, with good friends, jokes and silly conversations.
You do an amazing job of entertaining while also weaving in your overarching ideology, which revolves around embracing and progressing the conversation on female-oriented sexuality. How do you react when people wilfully misunderstand what you’re about?
C: We try to engage with them, especially on Instagram. We invite them to shows, or sometimes I troll them – but in a weird way. I’ll comment on their food pics like, “Mmmm, yummy jambalaya.”
I’m so obsessed with that. I’m also obsessed with your outfits. What’s your process for picking what you wear for performances?
It’s spontaneous. We always wait until after sound check to put a look together. We just try to have fun with it! After a while on tour, we end up trading pieces or finding stuff here and there.
So is Y2K dying, or is it forever?
Everything else will come around again and again. It’s the vortex, the simulation. Maybe today is 2002 and 8888 at the same time.
You released two fashion collections under CG8. Do you have plans for more?
We definitely have plans to do more. Right now, we’re incorporating it into our merch. We have some really cool pieces – bras, rhinestone tanks, thongs, boxers with pockets, sweatsuits, and tights. We’ll have them available online soon, too!
You’re super-inspired by CicciolinaIlona Staller, the Hungarian-Italian porn star who was elected to the Italian parliament. You actually met her in real life! You know the saying, “don’t meet your heroes,” but how was it?
C: Oh my God, we say that quote too when we talk about her! Because she completely exceeded our expectations in every way. She was so sweet and SO hot. She brought us gifts for her birthday.
L: Yeah, she completely turned that phrase on its head. It was amazing to meet her. If only every meeting of heroes could be like that [pulls a sad face].
Your third EP is called Phantasea Pharm. If you had to assign each other a farm animal, what would it be?
C: Avi would definitely be the lawnmower.
L: We more or less already christened ourselves when we birthed the phantasea pharm. Veronika is a cow-pig hybrid.
Veronika: And Lida is a sexy rooster, and Chase is a slutty grill father. I actually cut her apron the night of the birth of the phantasea pharm.
Who is the ultimate cumgirl, past and present?
C: Us?
V: But also Cicciolina.
L: She’s our mother.
You guys are very high energy. What do you do when the mood is a little low?
C: One of us will scream “WHOOO,” and then we all start screaming. And then we start talking gibberish and maybe make up a little song.
If heaven was a place on Earth, where would it be and who would be there?
C: It’s right now! Today we’re making bikinis out of potatoes. Life is a dream.
What’s punk to you in 2024?
Being hardcore friendly.
And what’s definitely not punk?
Genocide – free Palestine. Free Lebanon. Free Congo.
Finally, what’s next for cumgirl8?
We’re about to shoot a video while we’re on tour in Iceland for our song ‘Something New’. And we have another very… brave new single called ‘Goblin’ coming out digitally early next year. You can get it on flexi-disc from 4AD. Hopefully we’re getting an AZO endorsement soon, so we can share it with anyone who might be struggling with a UTI. Please help us manifest that.
